Liberty
by Origamidragons
Summary: If Charlotte's music played just a little bit longer.


**There wasn't a category for Presentable Liberty! How about that? So this is the first ever Presentable Liberty/Exoptable Money fanfiction on this site under its own category! Also, I imagine the prisoner as Markiplier. Sue me.**

Salvadore wore an oversized but genuine smile partially hidden under a scruffy beard and shadowed by his fedora as he wandered back into his hometown. It had been so long... years and years. He wanted to see his friend again... perhaps he was still in the prison?

The sunny smile faded, eclipsed by a worried frown, as he continued towards the center of town. Silence hung in the air like a funeral shroud, accompanied by a putrid smell that made the traveler gag and cover his face. Cars were strewn about the road, abandoned.

To his right, an arm hung limply out of a half-open window caught his eye and sick dread settled in his stomach. He wove through the frozen traffic across the street to get a better view and felt he might throw up. A woman was sprawled across the front seats of the car, one hand dangling out the window and the other scrabbling at the door handle. Her eyes were glassy and dead, her throat swollen and bruised.

The traveler lurched backwards, finally placing that sickening smell as rotting flesh. He felt like crying as he looked around at all of the stalled cars. Could everyone... could his friend...? Could they all be dead?,

He swallowed down the bile in his throat and forged onwards. He couldn't just leave, he had to know the truth, and if his friend was even still alive he would probably still be locked up. He needed to help him. These people were already gone, but how friend wasn't. He couldn't be. Salvadore refused to believe that.

He turned a corner and stopped short. The street was piled with bodies, all with the same swollen necks and glassy eyes as the woman in the car but somehow so much worse. Rusty red had dried into the cracks between the paving stones and stuck to the bottoms of his well-worn boots. He could see the prison now, in the distance, the top levels disappearing into the low-hanging clouds. From a lamppost at the end of the street he thought he could see a body hanging. He flinched away from the sight, and not wanting to confirm his fears turned again towards the prison.

He wasn't sure how long he had been walking, not wanting to look around at the inexplicable carnage but unable to resist the grim curiosity that gripped him, and so he found himself examining the carnage with round eyes, unable to tear himself away. The silence was suffocating. He stumbled over a stiff, swollen leg and went sprawling, skinning his palms on the bloody pavement.

The music saved him. He shot up from his prone position amongst the bodies strewn about the street and worked his way towards the music, old and French and pure beauty to his ears, like liquid silver, smooth and soft. He wondered if it was coming from the prison, from where his friend was, but soon realized it was far too close for that. There was someone else here! The heavy heart that had been dragging in his boots bobbed up into his throat and as soon as he worked his way through the crush of bodies he broke into a run, coming to a stop in front of a cake shop just as the music ceased.

 _Charlotte's Delicious Pastries_

He tentatively knocked on the door- it was hung with a closed sign that looked like it had been scribbled in a hurry, and when there was no answer he gently nudged it open. A silver bell chimed delicately over his head, and his hand came away from the doorknob covered in a thin film of dust, and then there was a woman who smelled like flour in his arms sobbing hysterically. He almost stumbled under her sudden weight, but managed to catch himself and gave her a tight hug, quiet tears running down his own cheeks.

They were frozen in an embrace for a long minute until the woman hesitantly pushed away. "Are... are you the one from the prison?"

He blinked, then shook his head. "No, but he is my friend. I am Salvadore," he introduced himself. "I heard your music."

"Charlotte. I've... I've been sending him letters. There's no one else..." she trailed off and choked up with tears again, knees shaking. He caught her before she could fall and held her tight again.

"Shh, shhh. It is alright. I am here now, see, and we will go find him," he promised without even knowing if he could keep it. "Alright?"

She sniffled against his jacket and nodded, teary-eyed. Over her shoulder, he saw a gun and a neatly sealed note laying on the counter. He didn't mention them, but it didn't take long to figure out why they were there. It appeared he had arrived just in time. He gently took Charlotte's hand and tugged her outside, to the door of the prison that stood across the street.

"It does not look like a prison," he commented, and she nodded in agreement, apparently thinking the same think. There weren't any bars over the windows, no fence around the premises. It resembled a hotel more then a prison, albeit a very dark and cold one. None of the lights were on, and he felt her tense beside him.

"H-how do we know... how do we know if he's even still alive?" she asked in a soft, trembling voice, voicing both of their worst fears aloud.

"Even if he is not, we must try, no?" Sal suggested. It was the least he could do for his friend. He also needed to know for his own sake whether his friend had ever received his letters, whether he was alive or not.

He gave Charlotte's hand a friendly squeeze and they entered the building. Looking around, he realized just how massive the building was, and remembered he didn't know which cell his friend was in. He frowned, trying to work out a solution, when a door to his left, pitch black and painted with a lightning bolt, caught his eye.

"The generator must be through there," he remarked, tilting his head in the direction of said door. The woman next to him followed his line of sight and nodded.

"Do you suppose he'd be able to get out if we break it?" Charlotte asked. Sal nodded.

"Quite possibly. Let us try," he invited, yanking the door open. A static shock tickled his fingers as he made contact with the doorknob and a small smirk made its way onto his face. _I am coming, friend._

The room was dimly lit and he had to squint to see, but he could make out the generator well enough, a hulking misshapen metal lump emitting echoing clanking noises. A patch of exposed wires sparked sporadically, momentarily lighting the room up sickly yellow before fading into nothing. He heard Charlotte draw a worried breath behind him and flipped her a thumbs up before grabbing the vulnerable wires and pulling. A half-second after they gave, he was yanked back just as a spiderweb of white-hot electricity erupted from the place his hand had been a moment before. The generator buzzed and went silent.

He took a shaky breath, shocked by how close he had come to likely death, and gave the woman who had grabbed his jacket a grateful smile. "Why thank you, Miss Charlotte."

"You're welcome," she gasped, resting her hands on her knees. He offered a hand to help her up.

"Let us go wait for our friend, hm?"

They returned to the sidewalk outside of the hotel-turned-prison and waited, their shared worries increasing and compounding minute by minute, until they heard a faint _ding_ as one would hear from an elevator that had reached its destination. Moments later, a younger man with crooked glasses, hopeful eyes, and a faint growth of beard tackled Salvadore almost to the ground in a hug.

"Sal," he muttered into the other man's leather jacket. "Sal, you came."

A genuine smile spread across Salvadore's face, one of his first since walking into town, and he tightly hugged his friend back before taking him by the shoulders and pushing him back to get a good look at him. Then they both heard a soft gasp and Salvadore stepped backwards as Charlotte took a timid step forward. His friend's eyes lit up when he saw her.

"Charlotte?" he asked softly, and the woman nodded mutely, tears glistening in her eyes. "Y-you're okay... I thought..."

She cut him off with an embrace, gentler than the one he had shared with his old friend, as though if she held him too tight he might disappear. He hugged her back, repeating her name over and over, and they were both crying in loss and joy and hope.


End file.
